Tim Horton’s

It was a beautiful fall day, so we did the review at our somewhat regular lunch spot on the Cayuga Lake inlet, which just so happens to be two blocks from our office.

The Tasting

Lackluster display of mediocre-looking donuts.

The Unbagging

Major donut-packing fail = lots of chocolate left behind

Honey Dip

Tim Horton’s plain yeast donut is called the Honey Dip, which is clearly just Tim Horton’s trying to make it seem fancy that they use honey in their glaze. (We’re skeptical already.)

The donut is soft and delicate on the inside, but the dough is very bland. It has a faint flavor of yeast. The glaze is very sweet, and has little to zero honey flavor. We’re also fairly turned-off by its appearance. Despite being very fresh, the glaze has already cracked and looks unappetizingly dry.

Sour Cream

The cake is much more flavorful than the yeast donut. The sour cream brings a faint richness and you can taste the vanilla. The crust is holding its ground, although it could be crustier and the cake could be cakier, lighter, fluffier. Duc notes that the many nooks and crannies hold lots of glaze, while Laurel notes that clearly her favorite kind of donut is structured intelligently.

Chocolate-Frosted Cake

Tim Horton’s doesn’t have a lot of interesting options, at least not today, other than a seasonal pumpkin donut whose star-like shape and grungy, bright orange gunk in the center makes us run fast in the opposite direction. We pick the chocolate cake donut for our wildcard.

It feels great — Duc notes an excellent “preliminary cakiness” — but when it comes to flavor, it’s pretty rough. The dough straight up tastes bad, leaving the frosting to carry the full weight of flavor duties. Unfortunately, the frosting tastes like fake chocolate, which is dissatisfactory, to say the least. We don’t eat a lot of this one.

Texture

Duc: The Plain Yeast Donut was very soft and delicate, but I would have liked more moisture. The Chocolate Donut was moister and pretty cakey — it wasn’t bad. The Sour Cream Donut was super moist and generally pleasant, although a little heavy for me.Score: 3

Laurel: Texture can make up for lack of flavor sometimes, and that didn’t happen with the Plain Donut. On the other hand, I kept wanting to eat the Chocolate Cake Donut even though it tasted terrible, because the texture was compelling. The Sour Cream Donut was fine, pretty average.Score: 2.5

Flavor

Duc: The Yeast Donut was very, very bland, and there was a bit of a bad aftertaste. The glaze was OK and made my few bites non-horrible. The Chocolate Cake Donut looked chocolatey — you expect chocolate flavor, but that’s not happening here. By comparison, the Sour Cream Donut was awesome — the dough was flavorful and the glaze tasty.Score: 2.5

Laurel: Although the flavor of the glaze of the Plain Donut was ok, it wasn’t worth eating the outside when you still had to taste the inside. The Chocolate Cake was just awful. It didn’t even remotely taste like chocolate. The glaze sort of tasted like fake chocolate. It was just bad. The Sour Cream Donut had some of the rich vanilla flavor I expected, and it was definitely comparatively delicious.Score: 2

Final Thoughts

We are both surely capable of eating 1.5 donuts each, but we couldn’t force ourselves to eat more than this:

Duc: It’s all kind of meh, and reinforces that I’ve never been excited to get Tim Horton’s stuff.